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The film mirrors a Where Are They Now? study by Robertson, who has traced the lives of 800 heroin addicts two decades apart.

The doctor said: “One in four had died and a third were still using heroin in one way or another.

“Heroin has caused, and still does cause, a lot of misery in Muirhouse.

“Overdoses are sadly something we still see. I’ve had deaths in the last month among young-ish people.”

Dr Roy Robertson

Drugs expert Robertson, a professor of addiction medicine at Edinburgh University, still runs the Muirhouse Medical Group on one of the capital’s most-deprived schemes.

His research into the lives of heroin users he has treated since 1987 is fascinating. Like T2’s characters, the real-life addicts have struggled to get their lives on track – with two-thirds surviving on methadone prescriptions.

Less than one in five had got off drugs.

Robertson said: “Unfortunately, for the real-life Rentons and Sick Boys alive today, most are still using opiate drugs, living in social housing, on benefits, probably with hepatitis C and possibly with liver or lung disease.

“A lot of the Trainspotting generation look back at this era like others might look back at their first year of college.

“They look back at the 80s as being, ‘Wow, that was good – anything was possible.’ Now it’s all ground to a halt and it’s terrible for them.

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“This is not a case load that is full of inspiration – but just the sheer determination and clinging on to life was impressive.

“One heroin user we tracked down to a council house in Newcastle said he had hated Trainspotting because he said, ‘That was me. I was that character.’ He said, ‘It was the best two years of my life. It was crazy – there was lots and lots of heroin. No one cared. HIV had not been invented.’

“It all came clattering down on him when he found out he had HIV and diabetes.

“He’s older than he should be. He’s on antivirals but he is still alive. He’s married with kids and he’s working for a courier agency.”

Robertson – set to launch a new study tracing the heroin users 30 years on – added: “The people were spread all over the UK and beyond.

“We found people on the south coast, in Essex, Blackpool, London, the isle of Arran and the north coast of Scotland.

Shops at Muirhouse estate in 1999

“There were a few in America and Europe, who we didn’t get to see.”

Secret papers released last month showed the heroin and HIV epidemic that inspired Irvine Welsh to write Trainspotting sparked so much concern that the CIA compiled a report for then-president Ronald Reagan.

Robertson was among the first doctors to make the connection between addicts’ habit of sharing needles and Edinburgh’s spiralling Aids crisis.

Although the work he carried out with fellow medical professionals was vital, he feels guilty at the level of negative attention it brought to the city. Edinburgh was dubbed the Aids capital of Europe after Robertson helped to publish a British Medical Journal report in February 1987 suggesting the crisis was being caused by users sharing injecting equipment.

He added: “It sparked a furore. Everybody from government people to Playboy magazine turned up at Muirhouse surgery.

“About 50 TV companies arrived over the next few months.

“I regret drawing so much attention to our community. Edinburgh got the tag ‘Aids capital of Europe’. That was unfair because there were lots of other places.

“The problem for Muirhouse was we had identified the problem and were first to publish an article in the British Medical Journal.

“Looking back, it was a very scary time. There was a plague-like feel to it. We had kids dying from Aids.

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“I had teenagers who had all left school together coming through the door jaundiced and with needle wounds asking for help.

“When I asked them what drug they were taking, they said they were on ‘smack’. I asked them if they meant heroin and they said, ‘No, smack.’

“We had a whole wave of deaths in the first few years – 16, 17 and 18-year-olds, who had hardly any experience of drugs at all, taking a shot of the very strong heroin there was at the time and dying.

“I remember being in the city mortuary a lot identifying people who had been found in flats dead on their own.

“No one liked drug users. The police didn’t show much of an interest. The pathology people at the time just put it down as another drug overdose.

“But it was tragic, devastating for families. There’s a house near our surgery where three people in one family overdosed and died.

Hypodermic syringe

“There are houses all over the place where there’s been several fatalities.

“I can drive around this area and there are all sorts of places that evoke bad memories.”

Robertson said the city was gripped by panic when the HIV epidemic was discovered and addicts started dying.

Doctors were worried about treating patients. He added: “It started off with young people coming in with hepatitis and abscesses and sores on their arms.

“We had people having overdoses and sudden deaths.

“The apocalypse bit came later with the HIV epidemic, which we didn’t discover until 1985. And that was when things got really very dark. We had an epidemic.

“At the beginning, people didn’t know how it was spread.

“Like everyone, of course, I was worried treating patients. The police were worried and the local authorities were worried. People wouldn’t sit next to people on the bus because they thought they might catch it from a drug user.

“It’s hard to get your head around that now but anxiety was huge.”

But Robertson thinks Trainspotting was a turning point in how heroin users were viewed.

He said: “I think we owe Irvine Welsh a great debt because he brought it out in the open. He definitely humanised drug users.

“You would be completely insensitive to not have some recognition of these characters.”